[Pdx-pm] program dispersement

[John Sechrest]

In several sites, best practices includes some site management
tool like CFengine (http://www.cfengine.org) or LCFG
(http://www.lcfg.org) or ISconf (http://www.isconf.org)

Having some methodology describing the state of your systems
and then having a program make it happen is a good choice
when you can afford to spend the set up time to do it.



Michael G Schwern <schwern at pobox.com> writes:

 % On Wed, Jun 30, 2004 at 10:15:46AM -0700, Thomas J Keller wrote:
 % > Gretings, 
 % > This isn't programming. But it is relevant. Once you've got some 
 % > programs into production on various machines, what are "best practices" 
 % > for updating and bug fixing? I can't count on my users to do anything 
 % > but double click a desktop icon. 
 % 
 % Are the various machines under your control?  I assume not.
 % 
 % Most self-updating software these days seems to do something along these 
 % lines:
 % 
 % 1) On startup query a built in http URL to get the latest version # & 
 %    download location.
 % 2) If newer, ask the user if they want to update.
 % 3) If yes, download the installer.
 % 4) Start the installer and quit.  Let the user do the rest.
 % 
 % That's about it.  You can try getting clever by downloading just the diff
 % between your version and the latest (cvs diff -rOLD_VERSION -rNEW_VERSION)
 % and patch the existing code, but that's really only useful for really
 % big apps.
 % 
 % 
 % -- 
 % Michael G Schwern        schwern at pobox.com  http://www.pobox.com/~schwern/
 % But I wore the juice!
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 % http://mail.pm.org/mailman/listinfo/pdx-pm-list

-----
John Sechrest          .         Helping people use
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                          .            more effectively
                             .                      
                                 .       Internet: sechrest at peak.org
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                                              . http://www.peak.org/~sechrest